How to Test your SaaS Idea without Losing a Bunch of Money

We’ve all had an idea for our next million-dollar product - and many of us have even tried to launch it.

Considering 90% of startups fail (I’d argue that the real number is even higher), chances are, the idea didn’t work out as you assumed it would in your head.

If you ask any successful startup founder, they will tell you that these ‘failures’ aren’t actually failures - instead, they’re learning experiences that virtually every successful founder has once went through.

A successful founder didn’t just get lucky - they failed, got up, failed again, and got up again - all in a loop until eventually, something worked.

This all sounds great, but there’s one aspect which makes this process of repeated failure nearly impossible - money.

If you’re a new startup founder, you probably do not have unlimited resources, and you can’t afford to just launch and experiment with a bunch of different businesses, right?

You probably think that, but I disagree - and in this article, I’m going to teach you how you, a broke startup founder, can afford the cycle of failure until eventually, you succeed.

“You gotta spend money to make money”

Chances are, you’ve heard this before - and it’s completely true. You can almost never launch a business without spending a single dollar. But, most of us can afford to lose a little bit of money - say, a few hundred dollars. We can’t, however, be losing thousands - especially on ideas which are statistically going to fail.

So - how can we, for the least possible amount of money, give our startup idea a good run for it’s money before we decide to move onto the next idea?

Don’t overengineer

You may have had an idea for a unicorn product - one which can do way more than the competition and be an all-in-one solution for your target market.

While this may be a great idea, DO NOT try to build it. At least, not right away.

Along with money, building our product loses us time - and as a founder, that time is as valuable, if not more valuable than money. You don’t want to waste your time building something people don’t even want. Your first goal should be to find product-market fit for as little money as possible.

How can I find product market fit on the cheap?

Let’s say your idea is to build an all-in-one email tool for SaaS companies. Don’t start building this. Instead, here are some things you can do;

Simple now, powerful later

Find one thing that your competitors can’t do - in this case, let’s say a tool that creates beautiful email footers, and start with that. Make an assumption about your target market and build one simple tool into your app which you can do with limited time and money - along with that, add ‘coming soon’ features throughout your app to share your vision with your target market. The goal here is to make something useful as fast as you can, while also sharing with your early users what your bigger plans are.

This is a strategy that was used by tons of successful companies which you know and love, including;

Slack - Started as an internal messaging tool for a gaming company. The team was actually building a game called Glitch, but their internal chat tool ended up being way more useful than the game itself!

Twitter - Began as "twttr," a super basic SMS tool where you could text short updates to your friends. Nothing like the massive platform it is today.

Instagram - Believe it or not, Instagram was first a Foursquare knock-off called Burbn with some photo features. The founders realized people only cared about the photos, so they scrapped everything else and doubled down on that.

Zoom - While competitors were building complex enterprise solutions, Eric Yuan just focused on making video calls that actually worked reliably. That's it. Simple beats complicated when it solves a real pain point.

Notion - Just a basic note-taking app at first. They added all those fancy databases, templates, and collaboration tools later after people were already hooked on the core product.

Airtable - Started as a simple spreadsheet with database superpowers before they added all those complex automations and integrations you see today.

Canva - Launched with just basic design tools for simple graphics. All those presentation, website, and video editing features? Added way later after they already had traction.

Discord - Just a voice chat tool for gamers at first. None of the servers, bots, streaming features, or community tools that make it so powerful today.

Mailchimp - Began as a dead-simple email newsletter tool for small businesses before evolving into the marketing beast it is now.

Fake it ‘till you make it

For some ideas, building a simple tool just won’t do - if you feel like this is the case, my recommendation would be to build a landing page with an email capture form - simply a sales page which sells your target market on your vision, and collects emails.

This isn’t just an idea - many successful startups (which you probably know) have started their businesses with this very tactic - here are just a few;

Dropbox - These guys just whipped up a quick video showing how their file syncing would work and got people to drop their emails. Super smart way to validate if people actually wanted their product.

Buffer - Joel didn't waste time building his social media scheduler. He just made two simple pages - one explaining what Buffer would do and another showing pricing options. People who were interested left their emails. Boom! Idea and pricing validated.

Robinhood - These folks got clever with a waiting list where you could jump ahead by referring friends. They racked up over 1 million emails before they ever launched their free trading app. One of the things Robinhood used to boost their signups is a tool called Viral Loops, which I heavily recommend for this strategy.

Zapier - They started with nothing but a landing page explaining how their automation tool would connect apps together. People signed up, and the Zapier team used that feedback to figure out which integrations to build first.

Product Hunt - Ryan didn't build a platform right away. He just started an email newsletter about cool new products. That subscriber list became the foundation for his entire community later on.

OK, but how would I find these customers?

The internet is FULL of customers - you just need to find them. While you may think the only way to do this is through expensive ads (like Google, Facebook, and YouTube), you can definitely do this on the cheap.

The thing is, the internet isn’t very fond of people who shamelessly market their product for free (do this on Reddit and you’ll get band from subreddits before you finish your second post). However, you can share your product without ‘marketing’ it - people see this as far more genuine, and there are tons of opportunities on the internet to do this.

Building in public

Not only is this one good for finding customers for your current idea, but you can build up an audience which will stick with you for your future ideas, too.

Building in public basically just means sharing your building journey with the world, typically on X. Had an idea for a feature? Tweet it. Just finished something cool on your project? Tweet it. See, you don’t actually need to market - as long as people can see what you’re building, they will try it if it interests them - especially if they can relate to your personality!

Online forums

Don’t find a forum and post some long winded marketing message - but, if someone has a problem which your idea solves - people will almost always be happy that you’re sharing it!

You’re sure to get a few angry people every now and again, but hey, welcome to the internet. If you’re only sharing your product in places where it is genuinely helpful, you should be able to sleep at night knowing that you’re not a spammer!

In fact, at Memberstack, we got some of our first customers with the Webflow forum - just responding to people who were actively looking for something which we created!

Directories & launch platforms

There are sites on the internet such as Product Hunt and G2 which are made specifically for discovering new tools and products - assuming you have something usable (and not just a landing page), you should hunt the internet for any directory which is related to your product and submit it. While they typically won’t lead to a massive influx of users, it’s just one more place you can put your product.

These methods are all great for getting your first few users - and the thing is, that’s usually all you need in order to validate your idea! If you do all of these, get a good bit of impressions but very few interested users, then chances are - you either need to fix your messaging, or just scrap the idea altogether and move on to something else.

I’ve got my first interested users, now how do I scale?

So, you’ve validated your idea - you’re not making any real money yet, but the public has responded and you can see that people are truly interested in your idea. Now, you’re going to want to do 2 things;

1. Improve your product, and
2. Invest in marketing

The good news is that now you should have more confidence to sink a little more money into the project - however, there’s one method that a lot of businesses have used to get their initial capital without using their own money - and no, I’m not talking about angel investors.

Lifetime deals

If you have interested users, you’re in the PERFECT spot to be selling lifetime deals - say you have a product which you plan on charging $50 a month for - offer users a limited-time offer to pay you $300 and to get access to your product for life - no strings attached.

These lifetime deals perform awfully well if you have your messaging right, and they can provide you with the financial runway you need to turn your idea into a real business. Along with that, these lifetime customers are a lot more invested in your product and will likely provide more detailed feedback on what you can do to make it even better

Next steps

Now, you’ve validated your idea and got some financial runway to move forward with - you’re on track to becoming one of the 10% of startups that don’t fail! Now, it’s time to use that money to amplify your messaging through paid channels like Google and Facebook Ads.